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Restorative Justice

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Restorative Justice
Jamie Gibson
CJA/224
June 17, 2013
Don Kelly

Restorative Justice
The restorative justice program is a new way to deal with crime besides the conventional criminal justice process. This program is used in several countries other than the United States and even in the United States it’s only used in certain cities. The restorative justice programs involves several steps to resolve crime problems with the hopes of ending crime and making things right between the criminal and people that they harmed in the process. The restorative justice program involves several steps to help reduce crimes.
Restorative justice conferences are normally led by two facilitators and attended by the people harmed the people responsible and the respective support group of each side involved. The face o face meeting can be led by either one of the two facilitators and are attended by the people harmed and the people responsible. The shuttle dialog involves a facilitator acting as a go between for the persons harmed and the persons responsible. The police restorative warnings involve the persons responsible and their support persons meeting with a trained officer for a short meeting with the support group of the person responsible. The restorative family group conferences are attended by the person responsible, members of the family, support persons, and professionals. In this conference the views of the people harmed are represented at the conference and if they wish, they can be informed of relevant aspects of the final outcome and receive reparation and a letter of apology.
There are also non communication processes that involve support for the persons harmed, victim awareness, and restorative communications. These processes involve long term and short term support for the victim as well as support for the people responsible to help them change their lives and get on the right track in life. These options are mostly for the ones that want to own up to what they have done wrong. In the case that they do not want to own up to what they did and make things right the person responsible will go to a special court to answer for their actions before a judge and will have to agree to what the judge decides for punishment. The judge will usually suggest some type of help program as well as some type of incarceration in help camps, rehabilitation centers and other forms of incarcerations. In the case we studied this week, the damage goes beyond that of just the victim. The victim’s family was also affected by having to make extra trips across town to check on their mother, the neighborhood also was affected because they are scared about their well being and their property. The victim also had to rely on volunteer organizations to help fix her door and clean up the aftermath. The neighbor hood also had children scared and worried about seeing the bad people not to mention having to tie up the judicial systems time and money to pursue the people involved and restore the peace of the neighborhood involved.
In the contemporary criminal system there would have been a different outcome and process involved. The contemporary system would have taken the statement from the victim and pursued the people responsible. Once they located the people responsible, they would be arrested, questioned, and sent to trial to answer for what they did. The criminal justice system would have then sentenced them to what the judge thought was fair and they people responsible would have served their time and possibly returned to population with an above average chance of going back to jail and the victim would not have received any type of retribution such as payments for what was stolen and messed up. The restorative justice system allows for a full circle of help for all parties involved and tries to solve the problem of crime one case at a time.
Since David confessed to the crime he was allowed to take part in the restorative justice process and make things right between him and the victims. David was allowed to meet with the victim and they was allowed to work it out and get his life back to normal and able to stay out of trouble in the future. David also went on to play baseball again and go to college and get a career instead of living a life of crime due to the outcome of the contemporary justice system. Mildred was able to feel save in her own home again thanks to her family and support groups through the restorative justice system. The support groups helped check on her and fix her house back after the break in and her family checked on her on a daily basis. She was also allowed to meet with David and discuss what happened and listen to people associated with him on a daily basis and sees he was hanging around with the wrong crowd and wanted to make his life better. The community benefitted by being able to feel safer that this was less likely to happen to them by the same people because David felt bad about what he did and was able to change his life.

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